UEFI Secure Boot

[Don]

This is a question from ignorance (where I live) and may not be appropriate to this forum. I have a Lenovo laptop that I want to upgrade from 20.04 to 22.04, but I'm having a terrible time getting it to boot from the CD. Is it possible that UEFI secure boot, being enabled, is what's preventing me from even finding the setting for the boot device sequence? To me that seems logical, since otherwise the "secure boot" would be considerably less secure, but since I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd like to get advice first.
Thanks.

[arsivci]

*buntus get along with secure boot. Try pressing F2 repeatedly during boot and get to BIOS. In the boot section, you will have to move (usually with F6) the CD device to the top, so that PC boots first from CD. Save and exit with F10.

[Qqmike]

... or even this: reboot then quickly press the F2 and hold it down continuously! (I have an ASUS laptop that is real sensitive about rebooting into BIOS unless I do that).

[GerardV]

On my T420 Lenovo Thinkpad i repeatably press the blue "Thinkvantage" button during startup to get into the BIOS and then F12 to get to the boot options.

[rab0171610]

I just don't use secure boot. Problem solved. From an administrator point of view, it seems like something that is great for a server or work computer but excessive for the average desktop Linux user.

[Qqmike]

I always disable Secure Boot. I don't have any Windows OSs nearby. It simplifies things, in general.

[rab0171610]

Windows runs just fine after secure boot is turned off.

[Qqmike]

Windows runs just fine after secure boot is turned off.

Ah, interesting. It's a common (mis?)perception that one must enable secure boot for Windows. And then Linux patched around it. I didn't know. I'm no longer any kind of Windows 'expert.' (THAT would go back, for me, to 2007). I have Win 10 on a laptop with Kubuntu, but haven't booted into Windows for a 2-3 years now.

[rab0171610]

It was enabled when I installed Windows 11. I disabled it so I didn't have to sign kernel modules all the time. I am lazy I guess. Too much security for me. I never noticed any issues with the Windows system after disabling SB and had no issues. I think that if you re-enable it in the bios/uefi is when Windows will have a problem and may refuse to boot for security reasons. I have since deleted the Win11 and have it in a VM instead and only use Linux to boot the system.

[Don]

I have solved the first part of the problem. I now have a bootable 22.04 flash drive and have begun the installation. When I go to set up the partitions for the new installation, I don’t see the familiar designations. I'm used to seeing Free space (1MB), a root partition (/), and a home partition (/home). But on my Lenovo, the designations appear to be different.

Here’s a tree of what I am seeing:

/dev/nvmeon1
Free space 1MB
/dev/nvme0n1p1 efi 536MB
/dev/nvmeon1p2 ext4 400000 MB
/dev/nvme0n1p3 ext4 1629999 MB
/dev/nvmeon1p4 swap 17869 MB

I think that I’m looking at Lenovo’s designations for my familiar partitions, but I’m not sure. From the size, I think p3 is my /home drive, which I don’t want to change in any way. glen490 taught me a couple of years ago how to upgrade to 20.04 without damaging /home. I leave the partition sizes as they are and redesignate the / partition to be the same (/) and format it. I redesignate the /home partition to be the same (/home) and do not format it. The swap partition (p4) is fine the way it is. But p1 and p2 together appear to me to correspond to what I used to see as a single partition /. So when I go to install the new Kubuntu, do I designate p1 or p2 as the boot partition? Or should I delete p1 and p2, make a single partition out of the resulting free space, and install to that?

Having done a bit of online research, I believe that I should leave the efi partition completely alone and use the p2 partition as I used to use the more familiar /. Am I close? Even in shouting distance?

Many thanks.

[jlittle]

The list looks normal for NVMe storage; there's nothing Lenovo specific. nvme0 is the first nvme device, and n1 is device's first "namespace". I'd only wonder why p2 is so large, it could be a tenth that size for a root partition.

You seem unfamiliar with UEFI; UEFI always has an EFI System Partition, or ESP, usually a few hundred MB. You definitely want it. Several OS's can share it, there only needs to be one. Now, you talk about installing to a partition; that sounds like pre-UEFI thinking. The installer asks for a boot device; that would be /dev/nvme0n1. It just means it looks for an ESP there. Just designate /dev/nvmeon1p2 as / and /dev/nvme0n1p3 as /home.

[rab0171610]

Don, I think you are trying to ask what partition you should install the OS to, or more specifically, which partition would you use as / i.e. root.
If that is the case then you can skip all the way down to the relevant part of the last remark in the previous comment.

The installer asks for a boot device; that would be /dev/nvme0n1. It just means it looks for an ESP there. Just designate /dev/nvmeon1p2 as / and /dev/nvme0n1p3 as /home.

There is nothing wrong with your thinking. If you need any more assistance, please post again.

Good Luck!

[arsivci]

I have solved the first part of the problem. I now have a bootable 22.04 flash drive and have begun the installation. When I go to set up the partitions for the new installation, I don’t see the familiar designations. I'm used to seeing Free space (1MB), a root partition (/), and a home partition (/home). But on my Lenovo, the designations appear to be different.

Here’s a tree of what I am seeing:

/dev/nvmeon1
Free space 1MB
/dev/nvme0n1p1 efi 536MB
/dev/nvmeon1p2 ext4 400000 MB
/dev/nvme0n1p3 ext4 1629999 MB
/dev/nvmeon1p4 swap 17869 MB

I think that I’m looking at Lenovo’s designations for my familiar partitions, but I’m not sure. From the size, I think p3 is my /home drive, which I don’t want to change in any way. glen490 taught me a couple of years ago how to upgrade to 20.04 without damaging /home. I leave the partition sizes as they are and redesignate the / partition to be the same (/) and format it. I redesignate the /home partition to be the same (/home) and do not format it. The swap partition (p4) is fine the way it is. But p1 and p2 together appear to me to correspond to what I used to see as a single partition /. So when I go to install the new Kubuntu, do I designate p1 or p2 as the boot partition? Or should I delete p1 and p2, make a single partition out of the resulting free space, and install to that?

Having done a bit of online research, I believe that I should leave the efi partition completely alone and use the p2 partition as I used to use the more familiar /. Am I close? Even in shouting distance?

Many thanks.

You should partition as follows:
p1, efi
p2 / ext4 (format: yes)
p3 /home ext4 (format: no)
p4 swap

This will protect your data at /home; a backup of most important data can not hurt, though.

If I were you, I would double check if the 400G root partition contains any valuable stuff because that partition will be overwritten.

Secondly, I always create a different user with this scenario. This way, you will have a clean slate. All your files and configs will reside under /home/olduser and you can move them at will to /home/newuser.

[Don]

Thanks to all. The confirmation is very reassuring. jlittle is right; I'm entirely unfamiliar with UEFI, but I'm going to do some learning this morning.
I apparently stumbled into the right answer without being sure of it, which merely reaffirms my faith in the observation that even a blind monkey finds a banana once in a while.

[jlittle]

You should have a tested backup of your /home whatever you do.

If you do repartition, I suggest you consider using btrfs. With that you'd use the space for p2 and p3 for one big btrfs; in it root and home are separated into subvolumes.